It is
always later than we think, Jesus warns us this morning. Even if we are not
going to die tonight, we are going to die. No matter how great our wealth,
we cannot take it with us. Our fame, our influence, our possessions, our
accomplishments will soon pass and be forgotten. We must therefore seize the
opportunity to make of our lives what we can. Before it is too late. The
prospect is scary, but it is also reassuring. We still have time, some time.
Not as much as we would like to have, but still enough. What are we going to
do with it.

We
continue with our vacation stories. Once upon a time there was a daddy who
had made a lot of money in the stock market (he had also made a lot of money
in the commodity markets too). For every dollar he had invested in 1994, he
now had ten dollars. Starting with a rather modest amount of money, he had
become a millionaire. However, he as not the kind of person who could make
his investments and stick with them because he knew that in the long run
they would continue to grow. Quite the contrary, he was a real investor,
that is to say, he bought and sold stocks almost every day to make money
even more rapidly than did the ordinary investor who left it to his brokers
and advisers to watch the daily opportunities. Our hero earned his living –
and it was a good one – in other areas. However, he became obsessed with the
daily fluctuations in the market. He exulted when his holdings went up, and
grew depressed when they went down. He called up the DJA on his computer
several times every day and then explored his portfolio in detail. WELL, he
went on vacation with his family and of course brought his laptop along. It
happened to be one of those times when the DJA rose and fell like the tides.
So he spent most of his daylight hours on his laptop. As a result he wasted
his vacation, even though the weather was beautiful every day, the lake was
warm, the winds were light, and everyone else in his family had a wonderful
time.